This weekend we completely filled our fuel tanks for the first time. We had called around to get pricing for taking on 1,700 gallons:

• Shilshole: $3.02
• Poulsbo: $2.88 (up from previous week of $2.75)
• Port Orchard: $2.81
• Kingston: $2.79
• Tacoma: $2.99-$0.20 (for over 1,000 gallons): $2.79 (we were told $2.66)
• Ballard Oil: $2.73
• Covich-Williams: $2.69 cash & $2.80 credit

The prices were slightly cheaper inside the locks, at Ballard Oil and Covich-Williams, but the hassle and time to go through offset that somewhat. We chose Tacoma as the prices were competitive and good anchorage was nearby in Quartermaster Harbor.

We left Seattle late in the afternoon, and arrived in Quartermaster after dark. We were heading south into steady 25-knot winds on the nose, but the boat rode so comfortably that we eventually stuck our head out the window to see if it really was blowing 25. The opening door was hard to hold against the wind. It really was blowing that hard but, in the pilot house, we had no spray or other evidence of wind other than watching the waves.  Not noticing a small craft warning is a big difference from the previous boat.

We were able to run comfortably from the pilot house along the east side of Vashon in the dark. We’ll still want to get some kind of light dimming screens for the nav monitors—even with the screen brightness turned down and the chart plotter in night mode, the screens still were pretty bright. (We have 4 Lenovo ThinkVison L1900ps.) Buoys and crab traps litter the entrance to Quartermaster Harbor, so we ran from the fly bridge to enter the anchorage. Visibility from up there was excellent.

Saturday morning we arrived early at the fuel dock and waited for them to open up. We’d drained the side tanks completely so that we could accurately gauge our capacity, and were down to only 15 gallons in the supply tank, with fuel barely showing at the bottom of the sight gauge. That's under 1% of the capacity of the boat. We’ll bet we never choose to run it that low again.

We stretched a length of tape on the sight gauge level marking card and then added 50 gallons to each tank, marking off on the tape in 50-gallon increments. We hit the top of the sight gauges at 600 to port and 650 to starboard, and continued filling until fuel just bubbled up to the top of the fill pipe. We’d fuelled for about three hours, and the port tank took 834 gallons while the starboard tank took 831 gallons. That gives us 1,665 in the side tanks. Adding the 70 gallons in the supply and the 10 gallons in the day tank, we have 1,745 gallons usable fuel.

After fueling, we returned to Quartermaster for the night. We spent some time setting up the auto pilot—tracking is improved but more work is still needed. On Sunday, we had a nice easy run back to Bell Harbor with lunch underway. We didn’t notice a major difference in handling with the full tanks other than the boat is a bit more stable and doesn’t lean out as much on turns, but we’ve not had much of a chance to play with the boat yet to compare. We’re entering the final stages of commissioning, and while there still is much work to do, the boat is coming along wonderfully. We’ll be heading out for a week-long shakedown cruise starting this weekend, and will continue to settle in and learn more.

We are now down to one boat and no storage room. Only four dock lines and two jobs tie us to Seattle. We've been living aboard Nordhavn 5263 since taking delivery on Friday February 19th, and three days ago, the new owners took delivery of our Bayliner 4087.

The past week has been a busy one. We took delivery of the 52 late Friday afternoon and brought it from Elliott Bay Marina to nearby Bell Harbor Marina. There we had a second, temporary, slip with room to raft the old boat, the 4087, against it. Our first docking there likely was among the most difficult we'll face for a while. The slip was barely big enough for the 52, with a power cruiser in front and a police boat perpendicular behind. We had to slide the 52 in sideways, then back down behind the police boat, while avoiding crushing the cruiser in front. Then we moved the 4087 over from our standard slip and rafted it beside the 52. That was enough for Friday night.

Early Saturday morning, we picked up a rental truck and emptied our storage room. We nearly filled the 10-foot cube van. Our 5'x5' storage room was packed from floor to ceiling with items from our house, and some parts and furnishings from the 4087 that we don't use. We transferred everything from the truck down to the dock beside the boats, and moved what belonged with the 4087 onto that boat. And since we had a truck, we also picked up two Ekornes recliners that had arrived recently on order from back in October. By early evening we still had a massive pile of boxes on the dock. The weather fortunately was predicted to be clear through the weekend, so we left it all on the dock for the next day.

On Sunday, we transferred everything off the 4087 and the dock onto the 52. The 52 has a more sloping brow than the 47, making for a large storage area. We filled that completely, plus almost every room inside.

We then moved the 4087 to another temporary slip, transferred the 52 to our regular slip, and moved the 4087 back to the original temporary slip, this time tied to the dock instead of the 52. We'd removed so much weight from the 4087 that the waterline had shifted up several inches.

We spent early part of last week getting the 4087 ready for transfer, and then worked on settling into the 52. On Friday, the new owners officially took possession, and left the marina on Saturday. For the first time since we’ve purchased it back in 1999, someone besides ourselves was at the helm as the boat headed out into Elliott Bay. We sold the boat to James' uncle, so we'll definitely be seeing more of it in the future.

Also last week, Pacific Asian Enterprises project manager Jeremy Henderson called to tell us the fuel capacity is 1,860 gallons, a full 190 gallons more than we had originally requested. 11% more range! We love good news like that. Thank you Jeremy.

Commissioning on the 52 is not yet complete, but we wanted to take delivery in order to finalize the 4087 sale. So the Emerald Harbor crew has been finishing the work at Bell Harbor while we dig ourselves out from the mound of boxes. As the boat emerges from the unpacking, it's looking wonderful. Even as a work in progress, we're loving being aboard. From a comfort perspective it compares well with our past houses, if a bit smaller, but this one can go anywhere in the world.

Cann Inlet, according to one government report, is a well protected and popular anchorage on the west side of Swindle Island, with impressive waterfalls to the north, and opportunities for scenic viewing and shoreline exploration. Part of the inlet is also a registered boat haven. We were definitely interested. The only problem was that Cann Inlet is uncharted. Well, not completely. Chart 3726 does show the shoreline, but no depths or hazards. And the entrance to the anchorage basin is narrow and shallow. But once inside, the anchorage is spectacular.

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Last year, Bayliner Magazine interviewed us for a story about our travels and experiences aboard Dirona, our Bayliner 4087 (article). Soon we will take delivery of a Nordhavn 52, and turn the 4087 over to new owners.

We are, of course, eager to have the Nordhavn, but are not desperate to get off the 4087. Dirona has been a wonderful boat, far exceeding our expectations. We would not sell Dirona if it weren't for our desire to get into longer range cruising. For coastal cruising, it's near perfect. At 7.75 knots, it burns only 2.2 gallons per hour, making it even more economic than many trawlers. The basic design has been ideal, with sufficient space to allow rigging for comfortable and independent cruising (Dirona specifications and features). It’s been our home for the past year (Living aboard: one year later), and has taken us to some amazing places over the past decade. Since purchasing it new in 1999, we’ve put 4,100 trouble-free hours on the engines travelling between Olympia and the Alaska border, including the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the Outside Passage, and Christmas trips to Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, and the Broughtons. We have used the boat in all of the research for Waggoner sister publication Cruising the Secret Coast, and our published articles.

While both our families had boats, it wasn’t until we bought the 4087 that we became seriously hooked on boating to the point where we have sold everything that won’t fit aboard, and can’t imagine life without a boat. Dirona has had a major impact on our lifestyle and future plans, and it is with some wistfulness that we prepare to leave it behind.

We've been living aboard for just over a year now, and are absolutely loving it. What started out as an experiment ended up with our selling the house and car and becoming permanent liveaboards. We had a number of infrastructure issues to solve when we first moved aboard, and most solutions will carry forward to the new boat.

Connectivity was our first challenge. Bell Harbor Marina, where we moor the majority of the year, does have WiFi. But connectivity is intermittent, even with a large WiFi antenna. We instead purchased Clearwire. The 3G bandwidth (up to 2 Mbps) was workable, but not close to WiFi speeds (6-10 Mbps). A recent upgrade to 4G WiMax (3-6 Mbps) has improved speeds considerably. And Clearwire works throughout the Puget Sound area, so we've got reasonably connectivity for local cruising as well.

We'd been planning to buy bicycles when we got the new boat, but decided to get them right away that first week at Bell Harbor. We wanted something that would work well around town, but also that we could take on logging roads along the coast. We spent ages talking with Aaron at the excellent Velo Bike Shop in Seattle and left with two Giant FCR 2s. The lightweight aluminum frames make them easy to lift and carry, and their 27 gears are ideal for travelling around hilly Seattle. The bikes have been invaluable for living without a car. We can easily travel throughout the city, either completely by pedal or by bus using bus bike racks. James rides his bike to work downtown and Jennifer rides & buses to Redmond. And with bike racks installed, we can carry a huge amount on them. Some of the crazier things we've brought home include a full-sized dehumidifier and two 600' spools of line.

Pump-out was next on the list. We opted for PumpMeOut.com and continue to be happy with the service. We'll definitely be using them with the new boat.

For mail, we rented a large box at the UPS store in downtown Seattle, about a mile from the marina and on the way to James' office. This gives us a regular street address, not a P.O. box, so couriered items can be delivered. And someone is always there to sign for a parcel, which is a nice plus. And we get lot of parcels--with no car, we rely heavily on mail-order. Amazon Prime has worked out particularly well for us. With free two-day shipping, it's barely less immediate than going to a store. Our initial plan was that James would pick up the mail on his way home, but with the bicycles, either can easily do this. To reduce the amount we had to carry home and store aboard, we opted for paperless billing and statements wherever possible, and requested that any mail-order companies we used stop sending catalogs. Initially, we just forwarded our mail from the Post Office to the UPS box, but changed our address to the box once we decided to move aboard permanently. We've just renewed the box for another 15 months.

Laundry was another big challenge. Bell Harbor Marina was designed for transient boaters and has no laundry facilities, and none are nearby. The only laundry capability our current boat has is a hand-wringer. While this works well for us when we're on extended cruises, doing laundry by hand while working full-time was out of the question. And even if a laundromat were nearby, a weekly laundry trip wasn't appealing either. We eventually found an excellent solution with University Laundry Center. Every Monday morning we put out a big, red bag of dirty laundry, and every Wednesday that bag is returned with the laundry washed, dried and folded. They charge $1.10 per pound, which for us works out to a reasonable $120 per month. The service and results have been excellent, and is wonderfully convenient. But being an industrial laundry, it is a bit tough on the clothes, so we are looking forward to the washer and dryer on the new boat.

Bell Harbor Marina does, however, have excellent shower facilities. But we prefer to shower aboard. Our 10-gallon hot water tank limits the water consumption, but we still need to fill our 77-gallon water tanks twice a week to support that usage. This so far hasn't been too much of a hassle. We could attach the hose permanently to the boat, but we're not confident that the bilge pumps could keep up should we have a leak. On the new boat, we'll have sufficient bilge pump capability that this would be less of a concern, but we may just continue to run off the tanks anyway.

Cleaning dirty dishes is one of the few problems we didn't find a good solution for. As with laundry, we generally don't mind doing them when we're out cruising, but it's more of an imposition when we're working full-time. We could use disposable place settings, but that would generate a lot of garbage. The marinas supports paper and plastic recycling, but everything else, including food waste, goes in the garbage. So we currently wash the dishes by hand and the new boat will have dishwasher, so that problem eventually will be solved.

For groceries, we initially shopped at the Pike Place Market and Kress IGA in downtown Seattle. We purchased two Ortlieb bicycle panniers and brought them home full almost every week. The IGA has a good selection, but we did miss a number of products that we purchased at QFC, notably Boddington's ale. Jennifer's bus stops near the QFC in lower Queen Anne, so we began shopping there instead of the IGA. After a few months, AmazonFresh began delivery to Belltown, so we primarily use that service and supplement with QFC for those few items that aren't available or come in larger quantity than we want. And we still shop regularly at the Pike Place Market as well.

Filling the propane tanks is about the only thing we've not been able to manage by bike. For those few times that we do need a car, we've joined Zipcar. We've only needed to use it a few times, but it's worked well.